Seven people overtook me in the space of 20 minutes

[Tankersome]

AIBU to be so bloody annoyed by how easily some people find it to speed?

I live rurally with lots of windy, pot-holed single track roads. I commute into the town every day. The rural roads are all NSL but I drive them around 35mph max - and always pull over on the rare times a car is behind me to let them pass if they like.

When i finally get onto the main road that takes me into town, i get myself up to 60mph and switch on cruise control. It's a lovely straight single-carriageway with no pot-holes so I feel comfortable doing this.

But despite going the speed limit, I'm always overtaken. This morning it was a new record with seven people overtaking me in the space of the 20 minutes I'm on that particular road (it was five last night on the drive home).

They don't just speed to overtake either - they continue along at 70-80mph until they're out of my sight. It's not a busy or congested road whatsoever, and there aren't any pavements. So they probably feel safe going at that speed but it's illegal. I've never once seen a speed camera van parked at the roadside either so there is no incentive for these people to drive within the speed limit.

It just really annoys me. Yes, we all have places to be. But why do some people feel so at ease with speeding like that? And the annoying thing is, it makes me feel like I'm the one in the wrong because it's as though I'm holding people up despite going the fastest speed allowed on the road.

fascinating that so far there seems to be a correlation between people who are 'righteous about obeying the speed limits' and getting points...

maybe we should do a survey:

1 - always obey the speed limits + no points
2 - always obey the speed limits + points
3 - drive to what is safe, as safety is more important than the limit (could be under or over) + no points
4 - drive to what is safe, as safety is more important than the limit (could be under or over) + points

:)

I’d be 3.

Here is a country lane near me. Official classification NSL. Now, who among the hard of thinking on this thread would be happy to steam towards that bend at 60mph?

I'm with you OP.

I'm a combination of 3 and 1. :)

I'm very diligent about observing the limit when in and around town, especially in 20 limits but I also find that keeping to exactly 20 or below is sometimes tricky so I can't swear that i've never been at 21/22 or indeed at 31-33 in a 30.

I don't tend to go above 60 in NSL roads as the roads I drive don't tend to warrant it, I have however driven over 70 on a motorway or over 50 in a 50 zone, mostly just keeping pace with the traffic...

I've never been stopped, had a ticket or any points.

I had cruise control and a speed limiter on my last car, never even looked at how to work them and never used them. I'd also add that I only drive about 5.5k a year on average but my daily journey takes me on all sorts of roads and limits (10 in car park, 20, 30, small stretch of 40, 50, NSL 60 country road and 1 junction of a motorway) Not bad for around 15 miles a day!

@TittyGolightly I’d be 3. Thought you might be - you were writing sensible stuff above :)

2 would be the most worrying - unaware
4 next - unlucky, or bad at judging safety
1 next as not using any awareness and speed limit is more important than safety
3 would be the least worrying

all from a safety point of view...

Here is a country lane near me. Official classification NSL. Now, who among the hard of thinking on this thread would be happy to steam towards that bend at 60mph?

For what distance? How much of the road behind is clear?
It could be safe to do 60mph for 10 yards, and then brake down hard, it might have been safe for a mile before hand

you can not tell from just a photo like that...

would I still be doing 60mph approaching the bend - not a chance - but I might have done earlier... would also depend on which car I am in - the oldest takes longer to slow, the newest (still 15 years old) is a phenomenal car with fantastic brakes, and you can brake later and harder from a higher speed and still be safe...

look up Roadcraft / IAM / RoSPA and vanishing points to learn how to read a road / bend and get exactly the right speed...

I do not speed and have never had any driving offence at all.
There is a road I drive down near a football stadium. The speed limit is 30. There are no residential streets around it. When a match is not on, 30 is too slow and I know that I will have most cars overtake me. When a match is on 30 it his far too fast and 10-20 is the speed you need to go at. But I still see some people driving at 30mph.

I'm curious akkak as to where you get your statistics from. Particularly speed only causing 5% of deaths. Most accidents have more than one cause, which is why the statistics for road casualties talk about contributory factors. I'd actually looked them up before I noticed you talking about Brake. You can easily have a look at the raw data yourself (table ras50001).

Contributory factors for fatal accidents:
Exceeding speed limit - 15%
Travelling too fast for conditions - 9%
Loss of control - 30%
Swerved - 6%
Careless, reckless or in a hurry - 20%
Aggressive driving - 7%

Now some of these will overlap, and it is debatable whether they are all speed related. 'Loss of control' for example I would have generally thought was speed related, though there are other reasons for loss of control (medical, mechanical etc).

<a class="break-all" href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120606210128/assets.dft.gov.uk/publications/the-characteristics-of-speed-related-collisions/rsrr117.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">This is quite an interesting report, which seems to indicate that a much larger proportion than 5% of accidents, in particularly fatal ones, are speed-related.

YANBU OP

There’s no way I go even over 40mph on rural single track roads because they’re so so dangerous.

The fact that the NSL applies just means that they’re not classified. It’s kind of a default if it’s not a certain kind of road.

We have plenty of those roads and plenty of, quite frankly, idiots who bomb along at high speeds but they can’t see what’s coming. We’ve been clipped by idiots coming at us at that stupid speed.

Tanker, Olli & Cardi I have only got halfway through this thread, and I need some paracetomol. I may be gone for some time.

Oh and since akkak is encouraging people to look up RoSPa, which is definitely worth doing, you might want to look at their document on inappropriate speed. One thing sticks out in relation to this thread:
"Drivers who speed are more likely to be involved in collisions. They are also more likely to commit other driving violations, such as red-light running and driving too close."

If nothing else, this thread illustrates why it is important to drive assuming that all the other drivers are potentially idiots and to factor that into your stopping distances!

Oh yes! 😂

And it also illustrates how poor people's reading comprehension is!

@whatsthecomingoverthehill

it is more than 5% if you look at it as a contributory factor because of how the police report it - the key question is if you take speed out of the equation, would the accident have happened... and if you take all the other factors out, but leave speed in - would the accident have happened...

if yes, then speed is not relevant
if no - then speed is a cause

that brings it down to under 5% - can't lay my hands on the report, but it was a government set of stats and has been fairly widely discussed on the internet

interestingly, loss of control is often not speed, but e.g. rabbit running out into road etc.

of course, speed is a factor in all accidents because we wouldn't have accidents or deaths with the car parked at home :) but the reality is that most deaths come down to driver error, of which one choice might be speed, but where it is often not the main issue...

the thing is that speed is the easiest to measure, which is why it gets demonised - added to that we have a lot of drivers who do not really understand driving and mis-read a situation, they see speed as a big issue - as ironically do lots of people see loud exhausts - the number of CSW (villagers with speed guns) who target and report sports cars with loud exhausts even though they are driving under the speed limit is worrying! There is a lot of inaccurate perception

If in fact we concentrated on making people better drivers we would reduce fatalities far more - and the fastest way to do that would be to grow drivers who are observant and perceptive - not who are living in a world of their own - that is my worry with the OP's original post ref. cruise control etc.

speed itself is really not an issue - the perception of speed is, and inappropriate speed is - but let's focus instead on building great drivers who choose how to drive in an appropriate way - and if that means that where safe they want to break a speed limit, for me that is far less worrying than those who drive unsafely within the speed limit...

it is all about focus - is your focus as a driver on obeying the speed limit, or on driving safely - the two are not the same...

It also illustrates how people are perfectly happy to break the law when driving - would go mad about not paying for something that a shop didnt charge you for, not paying the correct bill, about any other law breaking, someone getting paid cash in hand.. but going way over the speed limit is fine and dandy. Funny old mumsnet world

@akkakk Your original statement was not a clear road without hazards. It was just a clear road. I don't believe that roads without hazards exist, hence my examples. What appears to be hazard free often isn't.

However, I concur that legality and risk are not the same thing. But, without these laws, we'd have idiots driving in ways that are risky, thinking that it's safe.

so the fact that it is noted in the 23% of cases is no more relevant than noting and stating that in xx% of deaths the car was grey / silver - that wouldn't mean that you are more likely to die in a grey / silver car. This is false. The colour of the car would not be a contributory factor, in that it didn't contribute to the cause of the accident. Speed is recorded as a contributory factor when it actually contributes to the accident!

Anyway, I think we probably actually agree on most things! I'm just drum banging at the moment after witnessing a very bad accident where speed was involved.

Karma is when a car tailgates you,toots,gesticulates and overtakes hitting an especially big pothole,one of the many you have being driving slowly to avoid.The snow this year seems to have affected a lot of rural roads hard this winter.

I live rural and nope I don't do the NSL single tracked roads at 60mph I don't think anyone does ? Apart from boy racers max I do is about 40, if it's two lanes quite wide and high visibility I will do 60mph but not the single track ones that's like signing your death warrant .

I'll look forward to seeing your evidence. It goes against most of what I have seen.

I don't disagree on driving for the conditions and that we should be concentrating on being better drivers. I also agree that speed is often focused on because it is easy to measure whereas not paying attention for example is not as easy to quantify. But the issue I have is that a significant proportion of the people who speed are generally terrible drivers, as that RoSPa report makes clear. People often think they know better when they don't. So they try to justify driving illegally on the grounds that it's still 'safe', but really they are dangerous drivers.

Oh and since akkak is encouraging people to look up RoSPa, which is definitely worth doing, you might want to look at their document on inappropriate speed.

Difficult to know where to start with that document! So much right, and so much wrong... There is plenty of debate around 20mph areas and whether they are effective or not - not proven yet. RoSPA also have the same issues in how they read stats as Brake :) If speed is such a big issue, why is it that in their 'solutions' they don't simply suggest slowing down!

RoSPA and IAM will both publicly not condone going above the speed limit - they can't that would be illegal - but equally all those involved in their Advanced Driving would acknowledge that breaking the speed limit is not the demon others make it out to be...

I have no doubt that as you increase speed, you increase risk - all I am suggesting though is that we put it into context - people demonise speed and suggest that everyone who speeds will die / kill someone, and clearly that is far from the truth

equally, if you want to reduce risk you can reduce speed, or you can do many other things (turn off your phone / learn how to overtake properly rather than badly / don't drink and drive / remove distractions in the car such as children :) / learn how to handle a car when something breaks / etc.)

I was behind a police car the other day (local coppers, not traffic police, so probably not advanced trained) - they wanted to overtake a lorry in front of them - so they accelerated up towards the lorry (reducing vision), then moved out suddenly without looking and nearly hit a car coming the other way...

I on the other hand was sitting back a way, and slightly out to the right, giving me clear vision past both the police car and the lorry, I waited for the police car to try to kill itself, and then moved out right, checked again, and passed both police car and lorry...

learning to drive is far more important than fussing about speed limits...

Theres a single track bridge near my house which is on a NSL road you can't see any oncoming traffic , I shit myself and my press my horn when I have to go over it one numpty will shoot over the bridge at 60 one day and kill someone.

@Ampa

Your original statement was not a clear road without hazards. It was just a clear road. I don't believe that roads without hazards exist, hence my examples. What appears to be hazard free often isn't.

I didn't mention the word hazards, but it was pretty clear:

If I have half a mile of open road in front of me - and on the assumption that everything else stacks up (in good health and not tired / solid, reliable car / no turnings / no mud on road / etc. etc.) then there is absolutely nothing unsafe about taking that road at 30mph / 60mph / 90mph / 120mph

However, I concur that legality and risk are not the same thing. But, without these laws, we'd have idiots driving in ways that are risky, thinking that it's safe.

I think though that the problem is that even with the laws we still have idiots driving in ways that are risky, thinking that it is safe... We have far more issue with people out there who think that because they are doing below the speed limit they must be safe - while trundling along with their DRLs on and no rear lights - in fog - on a motorway! Or driving at 25mph past a school where children are running out into the road - but it is under the speed limit, therefore it is safe!

In reality, the people who drive badly & fast will continue to do so regardless of speed limit - they will have accidents
Those who drive well & fast will continue to do so regardless of speed limit - they will not have accidents (if they do, they are not driving well!)
Those who drive purely according to the speed limits - some will have accidents, some won't

so we should be punishing the bad driving - not the adherence to the speed limit...

Anyway, I think we probably actually agree on most things! I'm just drum banging at the moment after witnessing a very bad accident where speed was involved.
I think we do :) I do understand - I arrived at the scene of a motorcyclist death once who had been doing 120+ through a stretch of road where there was no vision - a mile further back and that road would happily have anyone doing 120 - but that stretch, no way, even though 50mph limit, 30 - 40 would be better - so I do understand the pain and anguish it can cause in so many ways - but that is why I am an advocate for better driving, not assuming that adherence to a speed limit is automatically how you define that...

If the speed limit is 60, or 70 or whatever IMO there isn’t ever an excuse for exceeding it whether you think you are in control or not we have laws in place for everyone to abide by.

Struggling to understand how some people can so easily justify themselves breaking the law and potentially endangering others tbh.

I try to avoid a lot of the NSL country roads round here if it's not too inconvenient. Potholes, badgers, horses, tractors, flooding, narrow bridges, blind bends, overgrown hedges, ditches, and frequent drunk drivers (country pub with practically no public transport) - but the speed limit is 60, so lots of people fly down the roads at 65+.

And I'm not particularly a stickler for speed - if I feel it's safe to go above the speed limit I will (though not to stupid excess), but you'd be crazy to drive at NSL here.

We've had several people overturn their car, end up in a roadside ditch, or fly round a blind bend only to collide with the tractor the other side.

Except akkak, people who speed are more likely to be bad drivers in general. I think it's the arrogance to assume that you know better than the law leads to arrogance in general, which is not a particularly good characteristic to have when driving.

I have family who live very rurally. It is all locals who go flying down the roads very fast. Anyone visiting tends to go at a more reasonable speed.

Bilb There was recent consultation where the Government was considering increasing motorway limits to 80 mph. Speed limits were set at a time when cars were far less efficient at braking and responding to changes in road conditions.